Friday Funny: How Is A Building Like A Bowling Ball?

May 16, 2014

How Is A Bowling Ball Like A Concrete Building?

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Some of the entries in the competition weren’t quite up to the task. (Photo: ConcreteConstruction.net.)

Back in March 2014, the American Concrete Institute (ACI) announced the winners of a competition at the organization’s annual event. Sounds fairly mundane, right? What made this particular competition unusual was its theme: the Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (FCR) Bowling Ball Competition.

You may wonder how and why a building would have anything to do with a bowling ball, but the engineers out there will probably understand the relationship fairly quickly. You see, the objectives of this competition were to demonstrate the effect of fibers in reinforcing concrete, to gain experience in forming and fabricating a concrete element, and to encourage creativity in engineering design and analysis. Billed as “one of the livelier events at the spring ACI convention, the balls had to roll true and have high compressive strength.” (Source: ConcreteConstruction.net.)

The first, second, and third place teams in each category received cash awards of $750, $500, and $250, respectively. But best of all, they got to brag about building a better bowling ball.

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